


Headmaster Raven

by Masterweaver



Category: RWBY
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 18:50:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14816909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masterweaver/pseuds/Masterweaver
Summary: Arslan Atlan was worried. Haven Academy had just gone through an unplanned staffing change. She hoped that there would be some explanation.Then she saw her new headmaster.Things got worse from there.





	1. Chapter 1

“Did you hear about that big fight that went down a few days ago?” Bolin said in an excited undertone.

Arslan rolled her eyes as she led them through the crowd of their fellow students. “Everyone’s heard about the battle, Bolin.”

“I hear it was those Vale kids we fought at the festival!” Reese confided. “Team ROSY, you remember them?”

“First of all, it was team RWBY. Second, why would they be here?” Arslan looked at the damaged doorframe of the main hall. “And how the hell would they have torn these things off?”

Nadir ran a hand through his hair. “I’m more worried about the staff change. I mean, what happened? Why’d they spring that on us?”

Arslan frowned quietly. That had been the question on her mind as well, ever since she’d heard about it. She tried to get some answers, call up some of their old professors, but their scrolls were always out of range… or dead. And the news that Headmaster Lionheart had been working with the White Fang…

She shook her head, looking around the main hall. “I’m sure that our new headmaster will explain everything.”

“Damn, we should have gotten here sooner,” Reese grumbled. “I can barely see the stage!”

“Not like there’s anything to see,” Nadir assured her. “Nobody’s there. Just some ragged-looking bird on the rails.”

“The new headmaster is probably planning some sort of dramatic entrance,” Bolin pointed out with a shrug.

“I’m sure they’ll be here soon,” Arslan assured them. “After all, it’s almost seven thirty and it would be unprofessional for them to–”

The words caught in her throat when a bloody gash in reality suddenly appeared on the stage.

A figure strode through–a tall figure, garbed in red and black, with a large hoister on her hip that held a single hilt. Thick gauntlets were crossed over the artistic depiction of a flight of birds, while necklaces of many beads hung around the newcomer’s neck. Tattered black hair and feathers flowed out from behind a bone-white helm, crafted and painted to resemble the very creatures that they were taught to hunt and destroy.

It was a mask that had long haunted Arslan’s nightmares.

“Reese,” she commanded in a tone of forced calm. “Head down to the armory, get Bolin and Nadir’s weapons. You two, stay near the door until she comes back–”

“Atlas is slowly phasing out Huntsmen entirely.”

The voice that projected from the stage was level, cool, and feminine. Even if the students’ attention hadn’t been caught by the portal, the words would have made them look at the figure now observing them all.

“First,” she continued, “it was by replacing them with soldiers. Then they replaced the soldiers with their mechanical knights. They’re still training what they call specialists, but all of you saw that mechanical girl at Vytal. She might be the final step in ending the need for Huntsmen entirely.”

“Reese,” Arslan hissed.

“Huh?”

“The armory. Now.”

Reese gave her a confused look. “Arslan, what’s–?”

But Arslan was already moving, edging around the crowd.

“And really, what’s the point?” The figure took a few steps left. “You don’t need to be a huntsman to kill a Grimm. You don’t need to be a huntsman to fight a bandit. You don’t need to be a huntsman to found a village, or defend a kingdom, or even to fight a huntsman. The skills you can learn here, you could learn from anywhere, so long as you had access to the knowledge.”

She tilted her head, her gaze sweeping across the crowd. Arslan froze for a moment as the helm passed over her. As soon as it was looking away, she continued her cautious traversal.

“There is one difference between a huntsman and an ordinary mercenary. It is not their weapon. It is not their semblance. It is not their connections. It is their status–their image. When people see a Huntsman, when they hear the cry of a Huntress, they know… a Hero has arrived.”

The figure spun around, walking to the other side of the balcony. Arslan carefully, cautiously, let her dagger fall from her sleeve into her hand.

“There’s a trust put in those who graduate from the academies. A trust that they will give their time, their effort, and their lives to the continued existence and defense of the kingdoms. Even now, in Vale, there are many professors working tirelessly to prove that trust is well founded, to prove that the kingdom will not fall so long as one Huntsman stands. People trust the Hunstmen. And Leonardo Lionheart has betrayed that trust.”

The figure looked out at the crowd. “Some of you–not enough, but some of you–heard of the staffing change and tried to reach out to your old professors. And every single attempt has  _failed,_ because Leonardo lied to them. He told them of missions, in villages or in cities, places they needed to go. They trusted him, and they went, and every single one of them was killed by an assassin waiting just for them. And then, after he was finished wiping the board clean for his master, he told her where to find a bandit to pin it all on, and stepped aside so the White Fang could blow up the tower right outside those doors.” She put her hands on the rails. “Every Huntsman and Huntress left on the continent is standing in this room.”

Arslan’s grip shook as gasps of horror came from the crowd. For a moment, doubt wavered across her face.

Then she looked up at the helm, and her grip became firm as she resumed her journey. She was already halfway there.

“Some of you, no doubt, recognize me. For those of you that have lived hiding from the real world before today, let me set the record straight.”

The figure reached up, taking off her helm and hanging it next to the bird still perched on the rails. A red shawl bound the base of the feathers to the top of her head. Her face was pale, with eyes the hue of a Grimm’s. Something about it registered as familiar to Arslan, but she shook it off.

“I am Raven Branwen, leader of a bandit tribe that has razed many villages, plundered many homes, and killed many innocents. Some of you may have heard of me by my other titles; the Bloody Storm, the Witch of the Winds, the Nevermore Queen… the Bandit Bitch of Anima.” A quirk of the lips. “That last one isn’t true, I’ve only screwed three Huntsmen and Huntresses in my life, and none of them were from Mistral.”

A small smattering of nervous laughter came from the crowd. A very small smattering.

“And yes, as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, I am your new headmaster.” Raven crossed her arms again. “I came with my own staff, something that Mistral desperately needed. That, and a few other things, convinced the council to put me in charge of you wastes of meat. Yes,  _wastes_. Your last headmaster sabotaged everyone he was supposed to lead, which means your training has probably suffered. And now you’re learning to protect people from somebody who made a career out of terrorizing them. Your reputation is going to be marred twice over before you even graduate, and if you don’t think you can be the noble hero a Huntsman is supposed to be with that going against you… get the hell out of my school.”

Arslan, carefully, cautiously, closed in on the stairs. The bird cocked its head at her, looking her over as she fell still; after a long moment, it looked away, and she slowly began her ascent.

“By my count, I’ve got six months before the council scrapes together enough competent people to kick me and my tribe out of this place. That’s six months I have to undo the damage Leonardo did, six months I have to watch you fumble about as you play hero, six months that I have to endure your incessant whining about fairness and hope. And then I’ll probably go back to my old job, because to be honest? It was always the huntsmen that made my job so hard. Without them, it should be a stroll in the park.”

With a flick of her wrist, Arslan detached the dagger’s blade from its hilt, a rope trailing behind it as she sent it towards Raven’s leg. She swung her arm, already capitalizing on the motion–

–and, somehow, impossibly, Raven kicked the blade up mid-flight, catching it in her hand.

“Then again, if you manage to impress me, I might actually consider retiring. I hear Vacuo’s got some nice views.”

A single tug sent Arslan stumbling forward into Raven’s grip, lifted up by her collar before she could recover. The bandit examined the rage-filled face for a moment, ignoring the hard kick to her hip.

Then she tossed her over the rails, letting the impact of the ground knock the breath out of her.

“Your training begins tomorrow. You have that long to set up your dorms. If you’re first years, there are tents near the cliff.” Raven glowered at the crowd. “Get moving.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

“When I give you an order, Reese, I expect you to obey it.”

“Hey, you just freaked out for no reason! I thought you were being your usual over-prepared self! I didn’t know she was, like, a bandit queen or whatever!”

Arslan glared. “The Grimm mask didn’t tip you off?”

“A lot of people wear Grimm masks! The White Fang, Sombra Solitas–hell, there are little kids that paint their own masks and put them on!”

“There are kids who–? No.” Arslan took a breath. “No, we are not going to do this thing where we ramble off on tangents anymore. We can’t afford to do it. Not while she’s here. The point is that I am the team leader, and that means I need you all to trust me.”

“Look, we totally trust you,” Bolin interjected. “Like, really, we do. It’s just, you know… you can get a little pushy–”

“There is a self-admitted MURDERER in charge of our school! One who calls herself the NEVERMORE QUEEN! SHE DRESSES UP AS A GRIMM!”

“So does Sombra Solitas,” Reese countered.

“Sombra Solitas is an idol singer that puts out ironic songs,” Nadir pointed out. “Raven Branwen is… kind of different, Reese.”

_“NO TANGENTS!”_  Arslan screeched.

The other three stared at her.

She took a breath, holding up her hands. “Before today, we were students. Even during the Fall of Beacon, we were students–it was a fiasco and we fought to save everyone, but… we expected the teachers to support us. We don’t get that luxury anymore. We… we can’t expect professor Cerulean to be there when our weapons jam, or professor Vermillion to…” She swallowed. “…to… talk. About our conflicts of faith. Think about that. The people we looked up to, the people we relied on, they’re gone. And they’re not coming back.”

A slow, somber silence descended on the dorm.

“…gods. You’re right.” Reese sat down on her bed. “I mean, I remember… I remember trying to hit on professor Yuri and… and she’d always laugh and turn me down and… gods.”

She buried her face in her hands. Nadir sat down next to her, gently rubbing her shoulders.

“…As of this moment, we can no longer be students,” Arslan continued.

“So, what?” Bolin looked at her. “We’re quitting?”

“Hell. No.” She pointed out the window, toward the front building. “The woman sitting in that office is a monster, and I will not rest until she is kicked out. Which means we’re staying, and that means we have to accept a few things.”

She ticked off her fingers. “Number one: Our headmaster does not have our best interests in mind. She has admitted she considers Huntsmen and Huntresses to be a nuisance, at best. We have to assume she is going to set us up to fail. And that means we have to triple check every lesson plan ourselves, just to make sure it’s legitimate. Reese? You’re the best at research, that’s going to be your job.”

Reese sighed. “Right. Okay.”

“Number two: She is going to try to scare us off by making our time here the absolute worst. Either she’s going to throw us into the grinder to make us never want to come back, or she’s going to throw us into the grinder on the very slim chance she’s actually serious about teaching us because she wants to see what we can survive. We have to assume something bad is around every corner. We have to be paranoid. Nadir: risk assessment. We’ll start weekly, but if we have to up it we have to up it. Clear?”

Nadir swallowed. “I’ll… do my best.”

“Number three: She’s going to be calling us weak city dwellers. She’s going to be doing more than call us weak city dwellers. She’s going to be setting up the most horrible gauntlets she can get away with and putting us through them at random intervals. We need to up our game, with and without aura. I want to be ready to handle cannonballs at a moment’s notice. Bolin, you’re going to be writing up a physical training schedule for us all.”

Bolin quirked an eyebrow. “Uh… wouldn’t you be better at that?”

“I would, but I’m going to be busy trying to figure out how the hell she got in this position in the first place.” Arslan sighed. “We need to kick Raven Branwen out of that office. And I don’t know how the hell we’re going to do that. Which means while I’m trying to figure that out, I’m going to be relying on all of you to help keep this team together. To keep us ready.“

She took in their expressions, the nervousness on Nadir, the resignation of Reese, the bereavement coming across Bolin’s face.

“I’m not going to lie… we are at war. We are at war with our headmaster. We are at war with a legendary terror. We are at war… and I don’t know how to win. But we have to try, because… otherwise, Mistral breaks apart. This is the darkest hour of our kingdom. The lights of hope are few, and the lights of possibility even fewer. And it our duty to shelter those lights, to keep them gleaming long enough that they can be rekindled as the great fire that symbolizes our city. We are at war, and that war starts today. Let’s focus on making sure we can survive, so we’ll be ready to strike back.”

Reese let out a huff of breath. “Melodramatic much?” Her smirk didn’t quite disguise the quaver in her voice. “So… anything we should do now?”

“…you and I should get the team’s weapons from the armory. Nadir, Bolin, barricade the windows–not the doors, we’ll still need to get in and out. Once we get back… we’ll start planning for tomorrow.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

The moment the sunlight hit Arslan’s face, she knew something was wrong. Her eyes snapped open as she jumped out of her bed, her dagger whipping out as she looked around warily.

“…Window’s not barricaded anymore.” Her hand clenched. “Somebody was in here last night.”

Without a second thought, she kicked Bolin out of his bed. The shout of pain when he hit the floor woke up the other two instantly.

“Come on, Arslan, what was that for?” her partner groaned, pushing himself up. “I haven’t done anything wrong–”

“Weapons, now! Check the room, make sure EVERYTHING is where it was before!”

Reese scratched her belly with a yawn. “You’re doing that crazy paranoid thing again, Arslan…” she grumbled, lazily swiping her pistols from the desk. “Oh no, look at that, I think this book that was standing up straight is now leaning against another book! What could it mean, what could it meeeeean–”

“What happened to the barricade?” Nadir asked curiously.

Arslan nodded, pointing at him. “Good question. Better one: how could somebody take it down while we were sleeping without us noticing?”

Bolin gave her a flat look. “It was literally a chair duct-taped to the wall.”

“No, no, Arslan’s got a point.” Nadir looked at the window warily. “It should have… it’s a big, clumsy object. To move it away silently would take… maybe five minutes if you came prepared.”

“With a knife?” Reese suggested.

“Knife, sword, something to cut off the tape.” He looked at his own gun warily. “Actually, they could have used our own weapons and cleaned the tape gunk off afterward…”

“The point is we need a better barricade,” Arslan summarized. “We’re going to go into the city and get a hammer and nails, as soon as we can.”

Reese threw up her hands. “Look, I’m all for violating school regulations but there’s taping a chair to a wall and then there’s nailing boards over a window!”

“We have a bandit running the school,” Arslan replied seriously. “I don’t think we need to worry about any ‘regulations.’”

“Hey, uh… Arslan?” Bolin picked up a sheet of paper from the corner of one of the desks. “I don’t think this was here last night.”

Arslan snatched it out of his hands, reading it over with a focused expression.

“What is it?” Reese asked.

“…Our class schedule.” Arslan shoved it into her hands. “Notice anything?”

“Hmm. Well… okay, that’s a little weird.” The girl tapped the paper thoughtfully with her pistol.

“What is?” Nadir asked hesitantly.

“These are all book classes. History, Grimm anatomy, weapon philosophy, all that jazz.” She handed it over. “Everything physical is down at the bottom, but there’s no time or date. Combat, wildland survival, team training…”

“Raven wants us to learn all that on our own,” Bolin surmised.

“No,” Arslan replied, “she’s banking on the students being too lazy to schedule their own training.” She looked at him with a smirk. “Lucky for us, we’re one step ahead of the game.”

“Alright, alright, I’ll start working on it after breakfast.” Bolin rolled his eyes, opening the door. “Let’s just get something in our stomachs before we have tooooaaAAAAGMPH!”

Arslan rushed to the doorframe, leaning out and looking around carefully. Her eyes fell on her partner, tangled up in a rug hanging from the ceiling.

Reese leaned out carefully. “Huh. Booby trap.” She gave Arslan a wary look. “You think this is an upperclassman prank?”

“…I think we need to keep on our toes.” Arslan took a breath. “You two cover me, I’m going to cut him down.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

The trip to the dining hall proved to be more problematic than it had any right to be. Not only did they stumble across two more traps–thankfully not triggering either of them–they had to stop to cut an entire team of second-years out of some strange goo that had pinned them to the wall.

“Man, all the good seats are going to be taken, I just know it,” Bolin grumbled as they entered.

“Uh…” Reese looked around. “You might want to think again.”

The tables were only half occupied, with a number of the students warily glancing at the buffet. It was being run by a few people who Arslan doubted were even teenagers that glowered at every student who came up. They weren’t armed with anything other than ladles, but the way they poured porridge into bowels suggested, in some strange way, that crossing them might not be the best idea. A few of the students were gathered into groups, beyond that of just the four-man teams, murmuring to each other.

“…Something’s up,” Nadir surmised.

“More than our headmaster being a literal supervillain?”

He nodded, ignoring Arslan’s sarcasm. “Team SLVR’s not here. And team GULD… Lesedi’s missing.”

“Lesedi?” Reese sighed. “Damn. She was smart  _and_  hot. If she’s left–”

“I wouldn’t blame her,” Arslan said quietly. “I’m… going to ask around, see who’s here and who’s not. Get us a table and some food.”

“On it,” Reese said, turning to the buffet. She frowned at the ladle-wielding children. “Bolin, I don’t think they’ll let you have seconds.”

Bolin groaned. “Well, great. As if this wasn’t bad enough.”

Arslan’s journey around the dining hall was not encouraging. Many teams had a member, or a set of partners, drop out in protest. Team MOON was left leaderless. And team IRON… well, only Odharnait had stayed, and the poor faunus boy was looking ragged. She’d promised team ABRN would keep the others off his back, but by the anxious buzz of his wings, there was the distinct possibility he didn’t quite believe her.

She didn’t blame him. She didn’t quite believe herself either.

Arslan’s opinions were mixed by the time she found her way to the table her team had claimed. A good third of her fellows were no longer in the school. There were still ‘good’ people, and still ‘competent’ people, but the overlap was a lot less than what she would have liked. Most of the faunus students had stayed, but it felt more like they’d only stuck around because going out to greater Mistral right now would be suicide for them.

She sat down at the table, and then frowned. “Reese–”

“Before you say anything,” Reese defended quickly, “the servers say everyone has to get their own food. Some new rule, I think.” She snorted. “Or some bandit tradition.”

“…Alright.” Arslan stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

She marched over to the buffet, keeping her face firmly composed. The children–they couldn’t be older than fourteen!–looked at her when she came up.

“One student, one bowl,” one said in a bored tone. “And no complaints.”

Arslan nodded slowly. “First day on the job?”

“Hah.” The girl ladling out her porridge rolled her eyes. “As if. First day serving city-born killers, maybe–”

“I’m sorry?” Arslan asked, in a tone that all but stated she was not the one who should be sorry.

“Huntresses.” The girl topped off her bowl. “Killers. Huntsmen too.”

“I didn’t know you cared so much about the creatures of Grimm.”

The girl gave her a flat look. “Oh, right, them. Like they’re the only thing you’re going to be hunting.”

“Cindi,” the boy murmured warningly.

“I suppose we’ll have to protect villages from bandits who want to commit wholesale slaughter,” Arslan allowed flatly.

The girl laughed. “Wow, you really don’t know, do you?”

“Cindi!”

“What?” The girl turned to the boy. “She’s going to find out anyway–”

Later, Arslan would admit she probably shouldn’t have done what she did. Later, she’d admit that even after what she knew, she should have kept her cool.

Now, though, something caught her eye, and her hand snapped forward to grab the girl’s wrist.

The reaction was instant–a ladle to the head–and just as easily ignored.

“Where,” Arslan hissed, “did you get this?”

The girl glanced down at the scrap of fabric around her arm, and the faded white pattern. She looked up and smiled slyly. “It was a gift.”

“A gift.”

“From my mother. Who, by the way, is dead. So this is the last thing I have left of her. Oh woe is me, Huntress, are you going to rob me of my last link to my kith and kin?”

Arslan narrowed her eyes at the smirking little girl. Porridge dripped down her hair as the ladle twirled, twirled, twirled oh so casually.

“I’m not going to ask if there’s a problem here.”

The huntress tensed at the new voice. It came from right behind her–she hadn’t even heard the woman’s footsteps!

“Because obviously,” Raven continued, “there is one. So the question becomes, what are you going to do about it, and am I going to have to step in?”

She didn’t dare turn around. The girl, still twirling her ladle, was looking insufferably smug.

“…I,” Arslan eventually ground out, “would like to talk to you about this. Later.”

“Mmmm…” The girl glanced behind her for a moment, before looking at Arslan. “Sure. Staff room. If I’m not there, oh well.”

Very slowly, Arslan released her grip, took the bowl of porridge, and walked back to her team. She didn’t deign to look at the woman who no doubt followed her with red eyes.

Her team kept a wary gaze on her as she sat down. Their own bowls were still half full.

“…Uh… Arslan?” Bolin gestured. “You’ve got a little… something in your hair there…”

Arslan took a breath, reached for a napkin, and slowly wiped the porridge off her head.

“So…” Reese glanced at the buffet. “What… what was all that about, anyway?”

Arslan considered her for a moment.

“…I’ve told you how I was raised in a monastery?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“She had… the monastery’s symbol on her wrist.”

 


End file.
